


Holding Back

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 00:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4200516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early days after fleeing the Wardens, Anders and Justice try to adjust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Back

Anders should have been in a tavern right now. He should have had a warm room with a fireplace and a bed and a tub to wash in, but no, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, so now here he was—they were?—stuck spending the night in an abandoned barn. He’d been lucky to find that much.

It was ridiculous. Picking fights with farmhands in some pigshit little village, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone and strangers were grudgingly tolerated at best—he knew better than that. And over what? A few snide comments? People talking about _robes_ like mages were responsible for the Blight itself, and for the lousy harvest they were all suffering through in its aftermath—it was nothing he hadn’t heard before, just the usual grumbling; angry people looking for an easy target. And he’d obliged them. What had he been thinking?

_They don’t understand the first thing about what they’re talking about, that’s the problem. That’s how the templars get away with half the things they do, ignorance on both sides of the tower walls; they know no one’s paying attention. If people just knew what it was really like in the Circles, if I could just get them to listen—_

He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars, trying to derail this train of thought before it really got going again. There was no one here to preach to except himself, and he didn’t need to spend another sleepless night listening to his own mental ranting, thank you.

_Oh yes, we’ll start a revolution through the power of drunken arguments, one tavern at a time. Excellent plan._

He hadn’t even been drunk, more’s the pity.

He never used to have a problem with keeping quiet—well, not _quiet_ , maybe; but he certainly didn’t used to blurt out every thought that popped into his head like that, without stopping to think about whether it was in his best interest. Used to be he could walk into a tavern and spend an evening there in the center of things, with his lovely colorful robes and his feathers and his gold, outshining everyone in the room. And yes, there’d be the snide comments, there always were, but who cared? It wasn’t any worse than the bickering between the factions back at Kinloch Hold, or the little cliques the apprentices formed among themselves—people crammed into too small a place with too little to do, always far too interested in everyone else’s business. As long as they weren’t going for the pitchforks and the torches, why bother wasting time arguing with them, when there was sure to be someone more pleasant around to pass the time with?

Provided he didn’t make a scene and get himself thrown out first.

And his robes weren’t looking so lovely or colorful at the moment, either. Well, unwashed grey was technically a color, he supposed. Probably matched his skin, the way he was feeling. He wished he had a mirror. He wished he had a tub for a proper bath.

He wished it wasn’t so terrifyingly hard to hold anything back.

But he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Holding back, keeping quiet and calm and locked down, that was what all good little mages were supposed to do, wasn’t it? And where did that ever get them? It was dishonest, pretending the whispers and the scapegoating was fine, just the way of the world; just trying to avoid a confrontation to save his own skin. It had always been dishonest.

_Yes, thank you, Justice. I get it._

He wished a lot of things.

He hadn’t even had a chance to eat his dinner. He’d been looking forward to that. First day in what passed for civilization in a week, and all he’d gotten out of it was one mug of something that must have been more water (and possibly spit) than ale.

But maybe he should be glad they’d thrown him out when they did. It could have been a lot worse. At least he hadn’t started glowing again.

“Maker,” he said out loud, in the emptiness of the barn, and started to laugh.

There was rain coming down through a hole where the roof had fallen in. It was dry enough where he was, so he was choosing to think of that as just a bit of pleasant background noise. Atmospheric. All part of this pleasant jaunt through the countryside while he tried to delay the inevitable moment the Wardens caught him and dragged him off to judgment.

It was practically nostalgic, really, being on the run again; he’d just traded in his phylactery for the darkspawn taint. What must life be like for people without some kind of leash around their necks? He couldn’t imagine.

_It’s not right. The things they do to you just because of the way you’re born—_

“Enough, Justice,” he said tiredly into the darkness over his head.

Although that thought had actually been more Anders than Justice, he was fairly sure. To the extent that there was a difference. To the extent that it mattered. But it made him feel better to pretend, to think he could spot the moments when his thoughts started to slide from being _Anders_ to _Justice_ and back again, maybe keep better track of what brought out which side of him, maybe start to get it under control—

And now he was thinking of his friend as something he had to control.

_I’m so sorry, Justice._

And talking to himself, as if that would help. Maker’s breath, he was a wreck.

* * *

He woke up from dreams of darkspawn with heart racing and a shout in two voices echoing in his ears, and the room was lit up with a flickering blue glow, and in that moment the glow seemed a comforting thing. He was just relieved not to be waking to pitch darkness.

Uncomfortable lying still in his bedroll after that, he got up and moved to the window to gauge the time. It was still dark outside and raining hard, but at a guess, he’d managed to get a couple hours of sleep before the Grey Warden nightmares put in their appearance. Not enough to feel like he’d really rested, but enough that he was no longer able to just drop back off from exhaustion. Drifting off for another round in the Deep Roads wasn’t looking likely at the moment.

The window pane reflected back a faint, blurred image of himself in the flickering light, a shadowed outline dominated by two burning points of blue light and a crazed patchwork of cracks, and it was Justice who raised his hand to trace that faint reflection in the glass.

He hadn’t manifested like this in Kristoff’s body, this light that lit Anders up from within; the crackling power of Anders’—of his _—_ of _their_ mana singing through him, wrapping him in an embrace that was at once like and unlike his memories of the Fade. He could feel the potential in that power, the potential of thoughts ready and eager to become reality in a way that was wonderfully comfortable and familiar to him. It was as though Anders had always carried within himself a little piece of Justice’s home, bleeding through into the mortal world, and now mana and spirit sang to each other in a way that could barely be held back beneath his skin.

There were many things about their merging that hadn’t gone as expected, but Justice thought this small link back to the Fade had been one of the most beautiful surprises to result.

It was always so easy for Anders to reach out for a wisp of mana and soothe away pain without a thought for the process, the result of years of habit. Looking at the lines forming in the face of his reflection, the shadows under the eyes, Justice wondered why he couldn’t do the same now; soothe away the weariness and fill him, _them_ , with the endless energy of the Fade.

But the mana twisted and crackled and sang in his grasp like a living thing, like a third presence in this body, and with that singing under his skin, Justice imagined that if he relaxed his grasp for a moment, that mana would send all his desires tumbling into reality, and this room would burst into a lightning storm fit to drown out the rain pounding down outside, fit to tear down the walls, fit to drown every templar who’d ever laid hands on a mage.

And it would be just, and it would be a relief, but it wouldn’t be enough. The templars would die, and then Anders would die for it, and nothing would really change; the world would go on being ruled by fear, as it always had been. Everything seemed so much more complicated than it used to. He didn’t understand why.

But he understood that he had to learn to hold back.

The glow in his reflection faded, and the mental tone that he thought of as Justice faded with it, like trying to hold onto a memory of a life he’d lived in a dream.

That rain was really coming down. Anders tried to focus on the drumming on what was left of the roof, letting it drown out the thoughts running through his head.


End file.
